> AI coding saves me a lot of time, but the code is such low quality
Given that low quality code is perhaps the biggest time-sink relating to our work, I'm struggling to reconcile these statements?
Given that low quality code is perhaps the biggest time-sink relating to our work, I'm struggling to reconcile these statements?
Also there’s often a spectrum of importance even within a project, eg maybe some internal tools aren’t so important vs a user facing thing. Complexity also varies: AI is pretty good at simple CRUD endpoints, and it’s a lot faster than me at writing HTML/CSS UI’s (ie the layout and styling, without the logic).
If you can isolate the AI code to code that doesn’t need to be high quality, and write the code that doesn’t yourself, it can be a big win. Or if you use AI for an MVP that will be incrementally replaced by higher quality code if the MVP succeeds, can be quite valuable since it allows you to test ideas quicker.
I personally find it to be a big win, even though I also spend a lot of time fighting the AI. But I wouldn’t want to build on top of AI code without cleaning it up myself.
There are also some tasks I’ve learned to just do myself: eg I do not let the AI decide my data model/database schema. Data is too important to leave it up to an AI to decide. Also outside of simple CRUD operations, it generates quite inefficient database querying so if it’s on a critical path, perhaps write the queries yourself.